Fast
by littlechivalry
Summary: Once a year he enacts this ritual, every step the same, and every year he falls. But maybe this year when he stumbles someone will be there to catch him. EWE A bit angsty with just a touch of slash (of the H/D variety) if you squint.


**Disclaimer:** I do not own these characters or this world and I make no money from the writing of this story.

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**FAST**

It wasn't the only day of the year that he prayed. Every night ended with a few words of gratitude to the great amorphous entity that guided his daily steps.

But it was the only time he went to a church. Any church. And every church.

Setting out from his apartment before the grey light of dawn turned a rosy pink, he would wander from one house of worship to the next, pounding on what doors weren't open yet until he could get inside.

Throughout the day he moved from warm wooden pews, to cushioned kneelers, to cold flagstones or worn rugs. He spokes with priests and vicars and abbots and rabbis, as the scent of a hundred incenses clung to his skin.

He asked for, begged for, forgiveness.

In each holy place he would recite his sins. The long list of people he had killed, or those whose lives he sacrificed to the war. There were those he injured during the bleak days of fighting and the weeks, no less grey, which followed. Limbs twisted, hearts broken, families torn apart at his hands, or hands directed by his own.

He apologized whole-heartedly, with no trace of equivocation, no bargaining with sin and pain. He too had been wounded, nearly killed, his family was dead, friends…

But those were someone else's sins to atone for.

He had his own.

Some places gave him penance, a list of poems set to the rhythm of faith, or the vague order to 'go forth and do good works.' Other places gave him fire, and brimstone, consigning him to the fiery pits for all eternity, though his sentence could be leavened for a price.

All he wanted was absolution, but it wasn't something he could find.

"Harry?"

He turned away from the latest in a long line of crucifixes, each more detailed than the last, to see an angel walking towards him.

"Potter? Are you well? Granger and the others said you always disappear on this day, but I—"

Harry squinted into the thick rays of sunlight framing the figure before him until he could see it clearly. Pale skin and hair, a black suit, and soft grey eyes.

"Draco?"

The figure nodded, then held out it's hand.

Harry stared at it for long moments, not sure what was being asked, what was being offered. He shifted where he knelt on the cold stones, but his legs had long gone stiff and weak and before he knew what he was doing he had that hand in his grip, and Draco helped him get to his feet, then guided him to one of the marble benches that lined the wall.

"What are you doing here, Potter?" Draco asked, still gripping Harry's hand.

Harry stared down at where their fingers touched, their palms pressed together. Draco's skin was a fine shade of white, his own more ruddy, but there were traces of pink on the thicker tissue of the other man's palm, and at the tips of his fingers.

Draco pulled his hand away and Harry looked up to see that delicate shade of pink moved to high cheekbones and the tip of a pointed nose. Absently Harry wondered if that skin was as warm as Draco's hands, for all that it was thinner.

But the blond man was talking.

"…came to find you. And it took some doing, I must say. Weasley said you would be in a church, but he neglected to mention that there were over a hundred within two miles of your house. If I were a vampire I would have been a pile of ash by the time I found you."

The reminder hit Harry like a blow. He was sitting and talking to someone. Having a bit of conversation in a church, of all places.

He pushed Draco away and went back to the stones, though his head swam as he lowered himself to his knees.

By the end of that one day a year his head spun, his eyes tracing queasy figures on the streets as he made his way home in the dusk and lamplight.

Dinner would be waiting, a hot meal made by loving hands, and by the time he got home he would be ready to eat it, ready to re-enter the world he had so badly scarred.

"What in Merlin's name are you doing here," was harshly whispered in his ear as Draco took a seat beside him on the floor.

Harry smiled, but then that smile, like so many other things, died. He whispered, "I am apologizing," and closed his eyes, waiting for his stomach to settle before he returned to prayer.

He hear the blond snort, and then the church returned to silence and all Harry could hear were his breaths, his and someone else's.

He opened his eyes and saw the blond still beside him.

"I followed you, you know. I've been looking for you since this morning. When you went into the mosque I thought you would be out in a bit and then we could talk, but you went right into the synagogue, then a church, then another mosque."

Draco took a deep breath. "Are you apologizing in all of these places Potter?"

Harry nodded.

"Why?"

Harry sighed. "If I tell you, will you be quiet and let me finish?"

He felt the air shift as Draco nodded, and fine blond hairs brushed his arm. "I have a lot of apologizing to do." Harry saw Draco open his mouth and help up a hand to stop him. "No. I don't care who says what about the events of the war, or of my life for that matter. People died who should not have died, and if I wasn't the cause I was a least part of the reason. I'm not going to kill myself, and I don't think they would have been better of if I had never lived, but for one day, just one day out of the year, I want to atone."

There was silence again, then, "May I join you?"

Harry looked away from his folded hands and saw Draco had taken up a position of prayer beside him.

"Why?"

The blond smirked, but there was something reversed about it, as though he were smirking inside his mouth, at himself. "I suppose I have a few things to atone for as well."

Harry nodded and both men began to pray.

In a few hours they would move to another church, then maybe a small glade where the local coven practiced their rituals by some standing stones.

Eventually Harry would walk home in the dim light of dusk, and if he stumbled, weak from a day of fasting and hours in prayer and the weight of his own guilt, there would be someone there to catch him, to help him carry the burden of his past for a few more steps.

And perhaps someday, after a lifetime of apologizing, he might be able to forgive himself.

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**Author's Note:** I know you all haven't heard from me in a awhile. I have been writing, but slowly, and the words fall like drops of water from the lip of a near-empty pitcher. Poetic imagery, right? Of course it implies that eventually there will be no more water/words which would be a mite bit depressing if I believed it. In fact I have been living in a bit of a slump. Technical and personal issues have kept me away from my stories but NaNo is coming again so I have to set my fingers to the keyboard once more.

In fact I have extra incentive to write for right at this very moment I am sitting in a hallway in Washington state at a writing conference. Cool, huh? My sister and beta DerSaboteur dragged me from my comfy tropical abode so here I am, amongs writers and readers, feeling all legitimate and sh_t.

I hope you enoyed this story. It was inspired in a very loose fashion by Yom Kippur and the idea that we can be absolved of our sins, that there is something we can do to be forgiven, especially for the things there is no way to make right. (If that makes sense. DerSaboteur is working right now on actually work stuff so I can't bother her for grammar questions. You'll have to tolerate my own meager grasping for context.)

Read and review. Again, I apologize for being so long gone. And you can trust me because I'm the one that always speaks the truth.


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